https://metro.co.uk/2025/05/08/us-warned-prepare-bird-flu-absolutely-next-pandemic-23045907/

Jessica Kwong

Published May 8, 2025 4:00am Updated May 8, 2025 4:01am

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The US – and the world – should be worried the bird flu could become the next pandemic, warned an infectious diseases and Covid-19 expert.

H5N1 cases in humans who had contact with sick animals have been recorded in all 50 states and the avian flu is widespread in wild birds worldwide.

As of Wednesday, there were 70 human cases in America and one death, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). There is no known person-to-person spread and the US’s national public health agency rates the current risk to the population ‘low’.

But an expert who hosts a weekly video series on the latest infectious diseases and public health issues said the US should be concerned about the bird flu potentially worsening to a worldwide epidemic and beyond.

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‘Yes, absolutely it could be the next pandemic,’ Dr Robert Murphy, a professor infectious diseases and biomedical engineering at Northwestern University, told Metro on Wednesday.

‘We have to (worry) because it could be another pandemic. It definitely could be.’

While the good news is there is no evidence of human-to-human H5N1 transmission to date, it is ‘a kind of virus that mutates very easily and frequently’, he said.

‘If the mutations continue and change the virus so that it could transmit easier human-to-human, we’re in trouble,’ said Murphy, who is executive director of the Havey Institute for Global Health at the university’s Feinberg School of Medicine.https://embed.acast.com/%24/35d3734f-1e29-4d0b-a646-15776be08249

The first and only human death linked to the current outbreak of the avian flu in the US was in January – a Louisiana patient over the age of 65 who was hospitalized with severe respiratory problems.

But around Asia, the mortality rate has been higher. From January 2023 to December 2024, the fatality rate in 261 cases of H5N1 in Australia, Cambodia, China, Laos and Vietnam was 54%, according to the World Health Organisation (WHO)’s Western Pacific Region.’

‘We don’t know if that’s a reporting phenomena or how real that is, but it’s most likely more lethal than the typical type A flu, so that’s the big fear,’ Murphy said of the bird flu.

Type A influenza is a common infection that can lead to widespread flu outbreaks and be serious.

Compared with the lead-up to the coronavirus pandemic, though, more preventative measures have been pursued globally.

The Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA) within the US Department of Health and Human Services, and similar agencies in other countries, have been stockpiling millions of doses of avian flu vaccines for humans.

‘They’re being held in stockpile in case this takes off,’ Murphy said.

‘So that is happening, but are we prepared for the next pandemic? No.’

There are licensed tests in labs for the avian flu, but the US lacks easy-to-use, over-the-counter diagnostic tests. Murphy said it is just a matter of adjusting the technology for simple use, and that better medication needs to be developed.

‘I don’t think it’s going to be like Covid because we have a vaccine already and there’s treatment already,’ Murphy said.

‘Some treatment for the regular flu works for the avian flu, but we could always use better treatment.’

Progress has been made in another major missing piece as far as preparedness.

Last month, WHO Member States completed a draft pandemic agreement aimed at strengthening global collaboration on prevention and response to future pandemic threats. The US is a member.

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The proposal will be submitted for consideration at the 78th World Health Assembly from May 19 to 27 in Geneva, Switzerland.

‘So the next pandemic that comes around, people will know exactly what they’re supposed to do, how countries are supposed to interact, so that’s a really good thing,’ said Murphy, assuming the treaty is signed.

‘If the bird flu becomes a pandemic, if humans can start spreading it to one another, we are much more ready for it than for the Covid pandemic that we just finished.’

New research examines the subjective experiences of crows.

by Walter Veit Ph.D.

Science and Philosophy

Updated May 7, 2025 |  Reviewed by Margaret Foley

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A couple of days ago, I published a co-authored article titled “Dimensions of Corvid Consciousness” in the journal Animal Cognition. It is one of the first science papers on animal consciousness that doesn’t just ask whether some species is conscious or not, but actively asks the question of what their experiences consist in.

What is it like to be a crow?

Source: Tom Swinnen/Pexels

While I am a philosopher, I spent about half a year during my doctoral studies in Nicola Clayton’s comparative cognition lab, which has become famous for their investigations of the cognitive capacities of birds, and especially corvids.

Corvid, or Corvidae, is the scientific name for the family of birds including crows and ravens. Next to parrots, they are often admired for their high intelligence, something akin to “feathered apes.”

But in this post, we wanted to ask what their subjective experiences might be like, not just how smart they are. We examined five dimensions of their conscious experience that have earlier been proposed by Jonathan Birch, Nicola Clayton, and Alexandra Schnell as a means to map the experiences of other animals.

First, their sensory richness. That is, how detailed and varied the conscious senses of these birds are. While corvids have great visual capacities, it will be surprising to many that their sense of smell appears to be well developed. While there have been only a few studies on olfaction (smell) in corvids, they appear to make use of it when trying to find food.

Second, we discussed the evaluative richness of corvid consciousness. This dimension concerns the variety and intensity of emotions and moods. Consider, for instance, such states as pleasure, pain, curiosity, fear, and boredom. Corvids appear to have high emotional complexity, seemingly influenced by the negative mood of others.

Third, we examined their synchronic unity, which can be understood by virtue of how unified and integrated the experiences of these birds are. Human experience is highly integrated, but birds have fewer connections and more specializations between the halves of their brains, which could suggest more disunity, though more research is needed here to draw any confident conclusions.

Fourth, we discussed their diachronic unity. How unified are their experiences across time? Animals are often described as living in the present, but corvids engage in a lot of caching. They gather and hide food for the future. Dozens of experiments on this capacity have revealed corvids to have incredible memory capacities and the ability to plan for the future. This is suggestive that their experience is more akin to a continuous self across time.

Fifth, we tried to answer the difficult question of how much self-awareness these birds have.

California scrub-jays, a type of corvid, have been shown to re-cache their food if they are aware of others in their surroundings when they originally cached their food. This suggests that they have a theory of mind. They model the mental states of others. Furthermore, corvids have shown some success in mirror self-recognition tasks that are often used within this context.

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We discuss many more studies in the post to create a fuller picture of their experiential profile, which I can only recommend to anyone interested in the topic.

References

A collection of my writing, podcast episodes, and video material can be found here.